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Obama’s Notre Dame Visit Is Still Drawing Criticism

Despite intensifying opposition, President Obama still plans to head to Notre Dame on Sunday to receive an honorary degree and deliver the commencement address.

Adding his voice to a growing chorus, Newt Gingrich renewed his criticisms of both the university and the president for the invitation, but this time as a Catholic.

“To the degree that Notre Dame still thinks of itself as a Catholic institution, it raises real questions,” Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, said on Fox News on Sunday. He converted to Catholicism last month.

“I think the president’s position has been the most radical, pro-abortion of any American president, so I think there is a legitimate question there,” he said, noting that he was speaking for himself, not the church. Last month, before his conversion, Mr. Gingrich had said on Twitter that Mr. Obama’s policies are “anti-Catholic values.”

Mr. Gingrich’s remarks reflect swelling protests against the university’s awarding of a degree to Mr. Obama, whose views on abortion and stem cell research are at odds with the teachings of the church. More than 50 bishops have expressed their opposition, and tens of thousands of grassroots conservatives have signed petitions urging the university to rescind the invitation, which it has not done.

Notre Dame’s student newspaper, The Observer, has reported that most students on campus support allowing Mr. Obama to speak and receive the degree. Much of the opposition, the newspaper says, is from alumni.

An April 30 poll by the Pew Research Center shows that 54 percent of American Catholics who have heard of the controversy support the invitation. The poll, of 2003 adults with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, also found that Catholics who attend church weekly are more opposed to the invitation than those who attend less regularly.

“These findings are consistent with Catholics’ overall views of Obama: a majority voted for him in the 2008 presidential election and express approval of his performance in office thus far,” the Pew poll says. “The new findings are also consistent with Catholics’ views on abortion and embryonic stem cell research, with pluralities in the poll expressing support for each.”

Still, the intensity of opposition to the invitation has caused some collateral damage.

For one thing, Mary Ann Glendon, the former United States ambassador to the Vatican, who was to sit alongside Mr. Obama at Notre Dame and deliver her own address, has canceled her appearance.

Ms. Glendon, a strong opponent of abortion rights, had been awarded the university’s prestigious Laetare Medal and as to speak at the ceremony. But she has spurned the award, saying she was “dismayed” that the university was using her to “balance” Mr. Obama. She said the invitation to Mr. Obama violated a 2004 decree by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that Catholic institutions should not honor those who act “in defiance of our fundamental moral principles.”

Ms. Glendon, now the Learned Hand professor of law at Harvard Law School, is the first person in the 133-year history of the award to accept it and then reject it.

And there may be fallout for those who support abortion rights and expected more immediate action from Mr. Obama.

As a candidate in 2007, Mr. Obama told the Planned Parenthood Action Fund: “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act,” which would prohibit federal, state and local governments from denying or interfering with a woman’s decision to have an abortion.

But he has not done so and at his third prime-time news conference late last month, he said: “The Freedom of Choice Act is not my highest legislative priority.”

Signing the act would inflame anti-abortion sentiment, not something Mr. Obama would be eager to do as he heads to Notre Dame. As he has done in other discussions about this issue over time, Mr. Obama soft-pedaled the matter of abortion, telling reporters at the news conference: “The most important thing we can do is to tamp down some of the anger surrounding the issue to focus on those areas we can agree on.”

He may be on to something. While a plurality of the public overall and Catholics say abortion should be legal, the April Pew poll found the number has declined to 47 percent today, from more than 52 percent four years ago. Similarly, a March Pew poll found that support for stem cell research had fallen below the 50-percent level for the first time since 2004 and constituted a slight decline in support since 2007.

Gingrich, that paragon of moral virtue, now presumes to teach us that Obama is unfit for the sanctimonious company of he and his lily-white friends. When will these Republican pharisees get that the whole world has been seeing right through their holier-than-thou charade for decades?

Newt Gingrich – that paragon of morality. Along with Limbaugh (drug addict), Bill Bennet (gambler) and some of the other hypocrits that inhabit the Right, you just can’t help laughing. The best part is that they can deliver their idiocy with a straight face.

I encourage Newt to blather on at every opportunity. His words are eaten up by those who isolate themselves in the right wing echo chamber. Everyone else is driven further away from the positions of the right wing when he speaks. Heck, even Newt’s fellow right wing Georgian, Gov. Sonny Perdue, was forced last week to admit that his state’s budget was so strained that tax cuts were off the table and that supply side economics didn’t work in a recession.

Better yet, Newt, throw your hat into the ring as a candidate so we can re-examine that stain covered record of yours. Gingrich epitomizes the GOP: old, white, southern, and hopelessly out of touch.

These Alumni protests are unseemly. Again, here is a good example of how Obama’s detractors manage to make themselves look unreasonable.
There is nothing in the Catholic doctrine that distinguishes between abortion, wars of choice and the death penalty. If it exists, someone please educate me. Let’s call this what it is; a political fight to raise money for the anti-abortion movement from Catholic Republicans.

You know, President Obama is not a Roman Catholic and is free to hold views contrary to church teachings.

A quick look at past speakers shows quite a few people advocating or engaging in activities contrary to church teachings – divorce, for instance. Or a small matter of covering up for pedophile priests, a serious case of wrong-headedness and mismanagement which did not keep Cardinal Bernardin from the podium. (The matter had not gone public in 1983 – Bernardin failed to notify police of the abuses – but was already under investigation in the church.)

“While a plurality of the public overall and Catholics say abortion should be legal, the April Pew poll found the number has declined to 47 percent today, from more than 52 percent four years ago.”

That is not correct. In April 2005, 14% of the people said that abortion should be illegal. In April 2009, that number was 16%. It has ranged between 11% and 20% for at least the past 15 years (cf //people-press.org/reports/questionnaires/513.pdf). The rest of the public, ie 80-some percent, say that abortion should be legal in at least some cases.

To the degree that Mr. Gingrich thinks of himself as a real Catholic, this raises real questions. Here is a man who committed serial adultery and had the moral character of an eel when he served one of his three wives divorce papers in the hospital.

So Axl, were the protestors wherever Bush spoke or at Crawford, being unreasonable and unseemly in protesting the policies they disagreed with? Since when did demonstrations against the policies of the President of the US lose their “freedom of speech” protections? If these were anti-war demonstrators at a Bush commencement address, they would be lionized by the press and the libs on this site. Once again, liberals prove that they are the party of intolerance and always will be. Why is Obama special and above the constitution? I would be interested to hear your explanation.

Notre Dame has always had a tendancy to think herself larger than the Church. The Obama invitation was a miscalculation based on the myopia indemic to liberal catholics.

He will speak, it will be irrelevant, and the defiant consequences for Notre Dame will reverberate for years. They have chosen a side, and “moderate” doesn’t fit in that description anymore. Jenkins will be forced out over this decision – not immedately, but soon – and the Great Lady of the Plains will have some fences to mend with Amercian Catholicdom.

It has been evident since President Obama took office that he is determined to be a non judgemental healer…to try and reverse the slide into bitter partionship aided and .abated by Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gingrich….enough rancor and division. Let us at least agree to listen to one another. This country is faced with the most challenges since WWII. We need a major national huddle.

What about Bush who is responsible for millions of deaths in Iraq? Why did the bishops not object to him? What about the serial adulterers like Newt Gingrich? What about the pedophiles the Catholic church was defending? God said – He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone. I wish His so called followers will follow that

Why aren’t the people who are protesting President Obama’s appearance and honorary degree demanding that President Bush return HIS honorary degree? Or are starting an unwarranted war and approving the use of torture part of the teachings of the Roman Catholic church?

“I think the president’s position has been the most radical, pro-abortion of any American president, so I think there is a legitimate question there,” says Newt?

This is the president that really wants to get us past the whole pro-life/pro-choice dichotomy (a battle of a previous generation) and actually reduce the number of abortions (through sex education, family planning, AND abstinence). Nobody is “pro-abortion” here, least of all this quite religious president.

And I echo the sentiments of many: Newt Gingrich acting as moral arbiter of Barack Obama is pretty rich.

All this controversy about Obama speaking at an event. What’s happened in the past when this has happened? Does the phrase “knocked one out of the park” ring any bells? And knowing Obama, he probably won’t shy away from the nature of the buzz surrounding it. Someone should tell Gingrich that he better keep his two-cents to himself, or he’s going to look awfully foolish the day after. Odds, anyone?

President Barrack Obama is most probably going to the worst president America has ever elected since the crisis and the new deal of 1936. He totally lacks the experience and wisdom that is required for this function. He has mpromised everything to everyone and he will not be able to fulfill his far fetched promises. He will not be able to withdraw american troops fromIrak wtihout the agreement of his miltary staff and he will not succeed in bringing prosperity in american homes as he threatens american interests all over the world by his taxing policy. The number of unemployed people will increase four year s long till the majority of the amercian citizens will realize the wringness of their choice;

While I am Catholic, and I abhor abortion, this is the law of the land. Therefore, I will not push my beliefs on anyone alse. If the University of Notre Dames feels it fit for the President of the United States to speak at their commencement exercise it is showing tolerance of opposing views. The university is inviting President Obama because he is President and because he is an academic scholar. The Republican Party is hypocritical on the abortion issue; they are using it as a political tool; not a moral one. If they really wanted to make abortion illegal they had eight years of Congressional and White House control to do so; they did not. Some would say that they would have been hit with a Democrat filabuster; well, we don’t know because they did not try.

As for Newt Gingrich; what kind of a Catholic is he any way? Being Catholic goes well beyond the abortion issue. Being Catholic, and Christina, means that you care about the needs of your fellow man. It means to help your neighbor; it means to help the poor, the blind, the ill, the elderly, the prisoner, tolerate other races and religions, etc. This goes against Republican beliefs of effectively everyone for themselves and that government has no role. His party, and he, believes that low taxes to the wealthy; they wealthy would spread the wealth around to help the less fortunate. We have seen over the past 30 years this is not true, but has had a much more negative affect. His party has even gone as far saying that people who receive unemployment are lazy and do not deserve help. They have said that those who cannot pay their bills are deadbeats, even though medical bills may have put a person in the position. While at the same time, they promoted the sin of greed; the worse of the seven deadly sins in the process.

Mr. Gingrich, and is so called Christian allies in the GOP, have forgot the golden rule “Love thy neigbor, as thyself”. They also forgot “it is easier to have a camel go through the eye of a needle, then to give up one’s riches to help they neighbor”.

So, while bishops across this country threatened Catholics for voting against a GOP candidates, the GOP candidates at the same time feel that they are more Christian than their Democratic counterparts. Yet, the Democratic Party, despite its view on abortion, is more Christian in their beliefs because they feel that it is important to help their neighbir. It is for this reason that social issues should not be part of politics and that the First Amendment was written to separate Church and State. Therefore, abortion, and other social issues, should be dealt with by the spineless legislative body we call Congress to settle the issue once and for all.

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